


Lure the Devil

by spaghettixday



Category: Altered Carbon (TV)
Genre: Altered Carbon Universe, F/M, Just read it lol, Original Characters - Freeform, cross-sleeved, i suck at summaries
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-13
Updated: 2019-04-12
Packaged: 2019-10-27 07:45:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17762678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spaghettixday/pseuds/spaghettixday
Summary: Vasiliy Kozlov comes off ice after two hundred years, brought back due to similarities between a case he'd work and an open case in the Organic Damage Department. Will he learn from the past, or is history doomed to repeat itself?





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Okay I know that's a shit ass summary but I'm kinda planning my route faster than I can lay the bricks, so let's roll with it.  
> This is set in the universe of Altered Carbon but with original characters. The idea came to me when Kovacs claimed he was Ava, that he was cross-sleeved. This would mean a world of difference to transgender individuals. So boom, here we go. Also, I just keep watching serial killer shit, so we threw that in there too.

The silence was deafening. She opened the closet door a crack, peering out. Darkness. Not even the nightlights that her father left on. The horrible things he’d done and he was terrified of the dark.

No reprimanding for emerging from her hiding place. No sound at all. None of the usual terrifying sounds that came from the basement, the sounds that he thought went unheard, the sounds that traveled through the ventilation until they clawed their way out of the ducts and into her ears, haunting her waking hours as much as they did her nightmares.

“Papa?” she spoke, her voice barely above a whisper. “Papa?”

The door to the basement was closed. It was always closed. “Don’t ever go through this door,” he’d told her, grasping her upper arms, shaking her when she didn’t respond. “Swear it!” When she swore it, he would pet her long, smooth hair. “Good girl.” Good _girl._ A reminder. What she’d confided in him was forgotten.

Her hand reached out, just grasping the cold metal of the doorknob. If he was down below, he would be furious with her. Her father had never hurt her before, but… The door opened slowly with a loud groan. “Papa?”

Cautiously, she stepped onto the first step. There was no light switch at the top of the stairs, meaning she’d have to make it to the bottom before she could see. Each step creaked louder than the last, the bottom step loud enough that she was sure her father would burst in and slap her.

The basement smelled of metal, sharp and harsh, the scent so strong she could taste it in her mouth. Her hand went to the wall, feeling for the light. When the light flickered on, her stomach dropped. Knives. Saws. Rope. Anything one could use as a weapon, everything was found in the basement. When she turned, she saw the photos. The photos were worse than anything. Photos of women. Closeups. Distances. Pieces.

She collapsed to the floor, staring up at the photos in abject horror. It was hours before the police came, finding her still staring blankly at the pictures, nonresponsive when they carried her from the home.

\---

They handcuffed her wrists, the handcuffs chained to the table. Although they were certain she hadn’t participated in anything unbecoming, they weren’t taking any chances. Not that it mattered. The girl had barely moved since they’d brought her into VR, had barely even blinked. Shock. But he doubted it. He thought she was keeping something. Something he wanted to know.

Her face lifted when he entered the room, a stony look on her face. “Hello there. My name is Seymour. I’m a member of CTAC.” She didn’t respond. “Do you know where you are?” Seymour asked, standing across the table from her.

“VR,” she stated. “ _Pochemu ya zdes’?_ ” She looked down to her wrists. “Why am I here?”

“Precaution. We thought it would be easier in VR while your sleeve is inspected.” He offered her a comforting smile, a smile she didn’t return. “You came in with a black eye and several other bruises. Can you tell me what happened?”

_You’re an abomination. Just like your useless mother._

“Papa.”

“And what did your papa do?”

“I told him something and he didn’t like it.”

Seymour sat down at the table, leaning toward her. “And what was it you told him?” She didn’t answer. “Don’t worry. Your papa, he can’t hurt you anymore. He did some very bad things, and he had to answer for them.”

She bit her lip. “I told Papa I needed to be resleeved. I told him I was supposed to be in a boy’s sleeve, not a girl’s. They had to have messed up and cross-sleeved me when I was born. He didn’t like that.”

Cross-sleeved at birth. He knew what she was speaking of, when the body is of one gender while the mind identifies as another. Not common, but not unheard of. “What else can you tell me about your papa?”

“He hurt people. Ladies. I could hear them in my room.” The girl closed her eyes. “I hear them in my sleep.”

A file materialized before him. “Zorina Kozlov. Your mother left when you were five, and you’ve been with your father, Yuri Kozlov, since. No other family left alive, no one to care for you.” He closed the file. “No one to pay for a different sleeve.” The last part made her flinch. “But… I think we can work something out.” Seymour closed the file. “This situation with the Envoys… This is Harlan’s World, I’m sure you’ve heard of it.” She nodded. “We can train you. And we can resleeve you. If you join CTAC, you can make a difference.” The handcuffs dematerialized and she rubbed her wrists against the chafing. “In future years, there are other options. Police work, continuing in the military, any number of career moves.”

She didn’t even have to think. Go to an orphanage, where conditions were known to be deplorable, to only emerge as an unsuccessful person, likely never making enough money to be resleeved at all. Or this. A chance to be herself. _Himself._ “I’ll join.”

Seymour smiled. “And what name shall I write down?”

“Vasiliy Kozlov.”


	2. Chapter One

“Disorientation, visual and auditory hallucinations, and even low-grade amnesia are normal.”

_“How long have I been out?”_

“You can even needlecast in minutes to a sleeve anywhere in the Settled Worlds.”

_“How fucking long?!”_

“A sleeve is replaceable. But if your stack is destroyed, you die.”

_“Two hundred years.”_

“There is no coming back from Real Death.”

There’d been no explanation for his being spun back up, only the same repeated sentence. “An escort will be waiting, I’m sure they’ll tell you.” An escort. With his history, more than likely the police. It was always police or military. The only other thing they’d given him was his location: Earth.

The hologram started her speech over, sounding ever chipper and delighted to introduce the newly resleeved back into civilization, her speech echoing in the tiled shower room. He tuned the sound out as he worked shampoo into his hair, trying to scrub away the suspension gel that coated his body. From the feel of it, his hair was shaggy, just over his ears. The sleeve was of average height, a lean build with a musculature form. Pale white lines, scars from some time past, covered the underside of his right forearm from wrist to elbow. A tattoo of a crow covered his left pectoral and part of his shoulder, the only sign of ink that he could see.

With the soap and gel washed from his body, he passed through to a changing room, where a small pile of clothes waited for him. Charcoal pants and blazer, white sleeveless undershirt, heather grey button-up, black shoes. From the corner of his eye, he could see a mirror at the opposite side of the room, nerves twisting his stomach at the idea of seeing his new face. He dressed slowly, but finally, it was time.

The face that gazed back at him belonged to a man in his late thirties, light brown hair and hazel eyes, a five o’clock shadow along his jawline. It was always alarming at first, that first time seeing his new face, even after doing so for most of his life. The only time he’d ever been relieved was the very first time, seeing a body he’d longed for for most of his childhood.

A stoic young woman waited outside of the changing room for him. “Follow me, please, and we’ll start your release papers.” He followed after her to a reception counter, sliding a tablet toward him. “We need fingerprints and a DNA sample to link to your existing bank account. There are also instructions for resting after your recent resleeving and how to handle the influx of hormones.” He scanned through quickly, doing as told, not reading the instructions. He’d been brought back enough to know what to expect. “Thank you, sir. The exit is just to your left.”

Only a handful of people collected in the lobby, waiting for their loved ones to return, to see what their new sleeve looked like. One person rose from the seats when he emerged, heading straight for him. A young woman with cocoa brown skin and shoulder-length back curls, a small smile on her face. She stuck out her hand when she reached him. “Lieutenant Camille Bisset, Organic Damage Department,” she introduced herself, her voice soft and low. “You must be Mr. Kozlov.”

He looked at her hand, not accepting it. “Corporal Kozlov. I haven’t been _Mr._ Kozlov since I was fifteen.”

“Corporal Kozlov, then.” She dropped her hand. “I’ll be escorting you to the New New York Police Department on behalf of Chief of Police Benjamin Banks. Follow me, if you would.”

He followed after her, taking in the changes of the world. He’d only been to Earth twice before, only to Russia, never the United States. “What does New York’s finest want with me?” he asked as they approached a hover, the doors both opening upward.

“ _New_ New York. They’re particular about the two News around here.” The hover doors closed once they were both seated, lifting off and into the air. “Where’re you from?”

“Harlan’s World.”

“Long way from home.”

He shook his head. “It was never home. Nowhere was.” The hover passed over a bridge, the sight of so many metal establishments, all crowded together, catching his attention. “What’re those?”

“Housing. With hovers, there’s no need for bridges, and with the ever-rising population, most cities have done the same.” The hover continued past the bridge to the land opposite where they came from. “So, do you have a name, _Corporal_?”

He glanced over at her, catching her watching him from the corner of her eye. “Vas. Vasiliy Kozlov. If you talk this much, you could at least tell me why the hell I’m back.”

“No idea. He didn’t tell anyone.” The hover entered a building, a parking garage, and went up several floors before parking. “What was it you were involved with before?”

“Little bit of everything.” Camille frowned at him. “Marines, police work, VR interviewer… Whatever they wanted.”

\---

Vas felt all eyes on him when he entered the police station, most of them full of resentment. He walked with Camille to the Chief’s office, his hands in the pockets of his blazer. “Hey!” Vas turned, a man coming toward him with a furious look on his face. “Who the fuck let you off ice?”

“How the hell should I know?” He started to turn, but the man grabbed his arm. Instinct took over, training that had been drilled into him from a young age, training that this sleeve seemed to have had as well. He grasped the man’s forearm and pulled, ducking forward as he pulled the man over him and slammed him into the ground, the man’s breath leaving his body with an audible “oof!” Vas continued to roll, moving so he was straddling the man’s abdomen, one arm lifted, his hand clenched in a tight fist.

“Kozlov!” He stopped, looking up at the sound of his name. Camille stood in front of him, fury written on her face.

Vas slowly lowered his fist and gestured to the man as he began to rise. “He started it,” he mumbled. Camille scoffed and gestured for him to follow her. He followed, never glancing back at the man, but also not missing the feel of daggers at his back from the stare. “What does he have against me being spun back up?”

The pair stopped outside the Chief’s office. “It’s not so much you as it is your sleeve.” He cocked one eyebrow in question. “Later. Go in.”

Vas eyed her for a moment, regarding the way her eyes shifted from his, before entering the office. The man behind the desk, an African-American man with a look of exhaustion etched into the lines on his face, grey hair cropped close to his scalp, glanced up quickly. “Bisset, Kozlov. Glad to see you know how to make an entrance.” Banks gestured to the two chairs in front of his desk, and the pair seated themselves while Banks brought up a hologram.

The information on the screen told Vas of organic damage to sleeves, damage that reminded him of the pictures he’d found in the basement, pictures that still haunted him at night, even after several lifetimes. He swallowed, reading the text that accompanied it. “What is this?” he asked, fighting to keep his voice steady.

“Five young women murdered across the boroughs, none of them linked together until a _journalist_ made the connection. Rather embarrassing for the force.” The grimace on Banks’s face grew. “Lieutenant Bisset is currently on the case.”

“And this involves me how?” There were differences, he saw. Closer inspection of the photos showed bitemarks. Flesh missing. Not something he remembered from the photos in the basement. But… something struck him familiar about the bodies, the dismembered pieces, the cuts, the placement…

A new set of photos and text flashed up in the hologram, files dated from two and a half centuries ago. Files with Vas’s own signature as the investigating officer. It struck him why the files were familiar. He’d worked the case in Russia, had apprehended the killer himself. “Has to be a copycat,” he said. “Leonid Petrov was completely erased.”

“Details left out of official press releases came up. Either Leonid Petrov managed to back himself up, someone else is carrying these murders out, or Leonid Petrov wasn’t the killer.”

The statement caused Vas’s eyes to lift to the Chief’s. “Petrov was guilty. I know how to do my job, _Chief_.”

“Either way, we must investigate all possibilities. Which brings us to your being brought off ice.” The hologram disappeared. “We wanted the original investigator working with our current investigator. Seeing as your going on ice was voluntary and you had no stipulations of being spun back up, it was easy enough to procure a sleeve for you. And now, you will be working with Lt. Bisset, working to figure this out, get a murderer off the streets.” Banks pushed a set of keys toward Vas across the desk. “We’ve also managed to acquire housing for you while you are here.”

Vas took the keys and looked to Camille. “What were the details left out? It’s not hard to see from the photos to copy them.”

“Most of these photos are kept on secure sites, police eyes only. We have AI working constantly to keep our system from being hacked.” Camille stood, and Vas took his cue to stand as well. “We also left out that the original killer took the stacks. And that he carved a pentacle just under the incision.”

“Doesn’t mean someone couldn’t have hacked in and found it out.”

“Our system is unhackable.”

“Nothing is unhackable.”

Camille shook her head and exited the office, leaving Vas to follow her. Passing back through, he could still feel eyes on him, but no one tried to interact with him this time. Unfortunately. The hormones that had still run through his sleeve’s system while he was still in the tank were overreacting. He was as ready to fight as he was ready to fuck. “I’ll have the files sent to your ONI so you can go over them tonight.”

The elevator the pair took to the lobby was mirrored, showing Vas his new sleeve’s face. It was unnerving to see such an unfamiliar face. Always was the first few days. But he would acclimate. Vas didn’t miss the way Camille watched him out of the corner of her eye. “You’re not very discreet with your staring,” he commented. She blushed and moved her gaze to the floor. “Gonna tell me who this sleeve is?”

“Later. Catching up with the files is more important.” The elevator doors opened into the lobby, an open and bright space that they hadn’t passed through when they came from the parking garage. More stares. Clearly the sleeve was someone well known, and much hated. “Just keep moving,” she instructed, placing a hand on his arm to move him along.

The apartment building she walked him to was only a few blocks away. Unlike in Moscow and Putingrad, the streets weren’t packed with peddlers selling their wares, with broadcasts of the businesses inside the buildings, with tourists and regulars alike packing the streets. It was still early, the sun shining behind a grey mask of clouds; street business didn’t start until the sun fell in the west, when the dark of the night softened the harsh reality of life.

“There’s food in the pantry, a few sets of clothes in the dresser. I recommend resting today, not going anywhere. I’ll be back for you at nine sharp tomorrow morning.” Camille lingered in the entrance, looking as though she wanted to say something. In the end, she cleared her throat and looked away from him. “If you need anything, call me. I live two buildings over.”

“Anything?” he questioned, one eyebrow cocked and a smirk on his face.

“Anything _important_.” Camille opened the door and started to go. “See you tomorrow, Kozlov.”


	3. Chapter Two

The apartment wasn’t terrible. Bigger than what he was used to, smaller than the house he’d grown up in. The living space was long and narrow, consisting only of a couch, coffee table, and a small bookshelf with five battered books. Separated from the living space by a long, L shaped counter connected to the back wall was an older style kitchen, all of the appliances a dirty shade of cream. Just past the end of the counter sat a two-person dining table. Bold of them to assume he’d have company.

To the left of the living space was a short hallway leading to three doors. One led to a closet, one to a three-piece bathroom, and the final to a block shaped bedroom. A large bed shoved against a wall, an open closet with a dresser inside, and a nightstand with a lamp were all the room contained, a few pairs of clothes hanging in the closet, others folded in the dresser. “Not bad digs,” he murmured, shrugging out of his blazer. Vas flipped through the clothes, trying to find something more his style, but grimaced when he realized there was nothing he liked. Include the fact that there was no fresh food in the refrigerator, only a cabinet of non-perishable food, and he was in need of a trip to a shopping center and a food market.

Vas stretched his arms above his head. Post-needlecast fatigue was catching up to him, as much as he hated to admit it, and the plush bed was calling to him. He slid off the rest of his clothes and pulled back the smooth, silky sheets. The bed adjusted to his body’s need for support after a moment, and he closed his eyes in delight.

“What’re we listening to?” A silvery voice, a flow of Russian words.

His eyes opened lazily. Gone was the box-shaped room, replaced by dark, wooden arches of a vaulted ceiling, smoke wafting in tendrils over his head. “Tchaikovsky. Swan Lake.”

The owner of the silvery voice put her arms around his chest, her lips a breath away from his ear. “I don’t hear any swans,” she murmured in his ear.

“It’s a ballet,” he answered, leaning his head back against her shoulder, her face still out of view. “The swans are metaphorical, I’m sure.”

“A metaphor for what?”

“Love.”

The word was a whisper on his lips, _lyubit_ , when he opened his eyes, finding himself not in the room with vaulted ceilings, but in the small, dark-painted box. A dream. A hallucination.

A blinking in his eye caught his attention. “ _Chto za chert_?” He tried to focus on the light, only for it to bring up a picture of Camille. He repeated his same statement.

“Uh, no idea what that means.”

“What? What is this? Why do I see you?”

“Your ONI. Online Networking Interface. Did they not tell you about this?”

Vas shook his head. “ _Nyet._ They mentioned something about it, but I wasn’t sure what it was and didn’t particularly care.”

Camille scoffed at him. “It’s an implant that connects you to others and the web, basically. And I sent you all of the files, but I’d advise you use the headset to read them.” He didn’t speak, and Camille continued. “You don’t know how to use the headset, do you?”

“ _Nyet._ ”

Her laugh was soft, melodic. “I’ll come over and set it up for you. Be there in ten.”

Her image disappeared, replaced by the real-world view. Ten minutes. Vas threw back the covers and dug through the dresser for the sweats he’d seen.

\---

“See? Easy as that.” Vas accepted the headset from Camille, turning it in his hands. It was a simple piece, a flat, narrow metal bar with two similar bars on each end, both bent the same way. A metal, square headband that went on the back of the head. Camille folded her arms on the dining table she sat at. “What were you speaking earlier?”

“What?”

“The language? When you answered?”

“Oh. Eastern Slavic. Or, Russian, they call it here. On Harlan’s World, the languages blended and just became regional Slavic. East, West, et cetera.”

She regarded him for a moment before grinning. “It’s so strange.” Vas cocked an eyebrow. “Carter spoke Spanish.”

“Don’t know that one. And who might Carter be?” Vas asked, sitting opposite Camille.

Camille exhaled through her nose. “Carter Walsh. Cop whose sleeve you’re wearing.” A cop. Of course. “As you could tell, he didn’t have a lot of friends. He was an aggressive man, always in fights, on the job, off the job. He got caught up in a bar fight, and he killed two men. One of them was the partner of your friend today.”

“The one who attacked me?” Camille nodded. “Well then, now I feel bad. Guy deserved to get in a punch.” Camille laughed and leaned back in the chair. “So why’d they give me this guy?”

“Freshest one.” At the look on his face, she laughed. “I’m kidding! Carter’s background is the most similar to yours, so the chief thought this would be a good sleeve for you.” Camille stood, pushing in the chair. “I should go, let you catch up on the files, get some sleep.” Vas stood and followed her to the door. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Until then, Lieutenant,” he told her with a smile. She shook her head and left.

He sat down on the dark blue sofa, putting the headset around the back of his head and resting on his temples, leaning back. The files came up immediately, projected in front of him rather than just on his eye, and he flipped through the newer files. They were relatively short: no eyewitnesses, no trace evidence, no suspects. The older files…

He removed the headset, not flipping through them. He knew what they contained. What he didn’t want to see. Vas placed the headset on the coffee table and made his way back to the bedroom to get more sleep before the morning.

\---

Relief. It washed over her – _him_ – like a tidal wave the first time he saw his reflection. It was the first time he’d ever felt… _right._ The sleeve they’d given him was that of a young man, seventeen-years-old, the musculature of his body already that of a fighter, something he could feel in the tight cords that wrapped around his body, the chiseled lines that carved out his form. His hair was a sandy brown, thin and cut short, his eyes a dark amber. It was the first time he looked in the mirror and didn’t see those steel grey eyes staring back at him. Zorina’s eyes. Yuri’s eyes.

 “You gonna spend every night ogling yourself, Kozlov?”

Vasilily turned his attention from the full-length mirror hanging from the wall beside his bed, looking at his roommate, an eighteen-year-old with thick, dark brown hair and matching dark eyes. “Pep talk for tomorrow,” he explained, looking back to the mirror. He could have looked at himself forever.

His roommate, Dezso Haas, scoffed, never looking up from the book he was reading. “Whatever, crazy pants.”

The two had been paired earlier in the year, at the very beginning of their three-year training course. Language was still a barrier at times when they were unable to iterate themselves in English. Vas spoke Eastern Slovak while Dezso spoke Hungarian, leaving them unable to understand each other at times. Even so, the pair had become close friends, neither having had much luck in the friend department before.

Vas fell into his bed, pulling the covers up and reaching for his own book. He’d only gotten a few words into it when he paused, the book drooping in his hands and his eyes staring unseeingly at the pages. “Dez?” he started. “Can I ask you something?”

“Yeah?”

He could feel his pulse pounding throughout his body, a steady drumming in his ears. “I, um… I can trust you, right?” He heard Dezso drop his book and turn toward him, something he confirmed when he looked over at his friend. His friend. God. _What am I doing?_ Vas swallowed and shook his head. “N-never mind. It’s not important.”

“What’s not?”

“Forget about it.”

“When it snows red! Tell me!”

“It’s nothing, really.”

“Vas.”

He made an exasperated sound and threw his hands up. “ _Prosto zabud, chto ya chto-to skazal!_ ” He sighed, switching back to English. “Just forget I said anything.”

Dezso stared at him for a moment, shook his head, and reached over to turn off his lamp. With Vas’s own lamp off, they were submerged in darkness. “You can trust me, you know. Loose lips sink ships.”

“What?”

“It was something I heard from Earth, from pre-millennial times. We have a friendship? Spreading our secrets will damage our friendship.” When Vas didn’t answer, he continued. “You don’t have to tell me whatever it is. Just know you can trust me, and nothing you can say can change my mind about our friendship.”

\---

Four in the goddamn morning. Even after years of being out of the military, his mind forced itself awake every morning at the same time. Vas groaned and rolled out of bed, dropping immediately into push-ups. Sit-ups. Chin-ups would have to wait until he could find a bar. He changed into the sweatpants and a t-shirt and slipped on a pair of jogging shoes, leaving the apartment they’d given him for his morning run.

He was just catching the tail end of the night life as he ran through the streets. Hookers paying up their pimps and heading back to their homes until the darkness fell once more. Desperate junkies looking to score one more time. Black market peddlers closing up their facades. It was the same in New New York as it was everywhere. This was the new normal. Or the old normal. Times changed, but people never really did.

The street came to an end at the waterfront. The body of water was far from anything he’d ever seen on Harlan’s World, or on any other world. But this was Earth, the oldest Colony, the one that had been subjected to human interference the longest. It was no surprise to see a murky green liquid, garbage clinging to the sides of the docks in foaming masses. Disgusting. With humans living so long through sleeves, one would assume they would want their world to live as well.

Before he could turn to go, he stopped. Something was off, something his years of work trained him to be on the lookout for. He knelt at the edge of the concrete dock, narrowing his eyes and peering into the murk. Even in the dim, grey light of the morning, he could tell that something was in the water. Something floating with the debris, the filthy foam, clinging to the side of the dock. It could have been a dead rat or a synth wig. Could’ve been. But Vas knew it wasn’t. “Goddamn it.”


	4. Chapter Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for any attention at all to this. It's just a play piece, something I had in my head, something to help me work in different genres (I've never really written mysteries/crimes or sci-fi, so it's a way of broadening myself). I'm having fun with this, and I'm glad you're liking it!

Camille ran one hand through her sleep-tossed curls, barely having had time to run a brush through them. She hadn’t, in fact, knowing it would take too long trying to brush the mass out and decided to just fluff it with her fingers.

She stopped when she reached the docks, her breath leaving her in a gasp. He was there, standing to the side, his profile showing. The angular jaw, the scruff on his face, the disheveled golden-brown hair. He turned her way, familiarity returning when she saw the warmth in those once so-cold hazel eyes. This wasn’t Carter Walsh. “Been out of the tank less than twenty-four hours and you’ve already caught a body.”

Vas gave her a lopsided smile. “Just trying to show you up,” he said with a shrug. The slight Slavic accent that Carter never held, that came through even in an unfamiliar sleeve, was almost comforting.

“What do we got?”

Vas shrugged again. “They won’t talk to me. Wonder why.” The sleeve. Right.

Camille whistled, catching the attention of the officers. “Officer Meyers! Wanna come fill us in?” The younger man gave a sideways glance at his partner before jogging over, eyeing Vas warily. “Officer Meyers, this is my partner, Corporal Vasiliy Kozlov. He’s not to be excluded from anything pertinent to this case.”

“Of course, Lieutenant. Our apologies. We just…”

“I know.”

Officer Meyers informed her of what they knew. Damaged sleeve pulled from the water, time of death undetermined, amount of time in the water estimated to be two to three days, stack removed prior to being tossed, marks on the sleeve indicating scavengers in the water had begun feeding on the remains. “Corporal Kozlov was the one to call it in.”

Camille looked to Kozlov. “My mind still wakes me up at four every morning. Went for a jog, wound up here, saw something in the filth that you call a river.”

“Yeah, well, that’s the Hudson for you.” Vas snorted. “We gotta check the body.” He followed her closer to the docks, approaching the sleeve. Camille accepted a pair of gloves from the ME and turned the sleeve’s head. An ugly canyon marred the back of her neck, showing where her stack had been stolen from her vertebrae. Just below the cut, in sharp contrast to the reckless wound, was a carefully etched pentacle.

\---

“Sleeve’s registered to Alice Porter, accountant out of Jersey,” Camille informed Vas, looking up at him from across her desk. He’d been given the desk opposite hers, the previous owner having been transferred from Midtown North to the 78th in Brooklyn six weeks earlier. “No immediate family, religious coding kept her parents from being spun back up, no siblings, no significant other.”

“No one to even miss her,” Vas murmured, adjusting his chair, trying to get it to a height and angle he liked.

“Does he study his victims? Find out who won’t be missed?”

Vas shook his head, meeting her eyes. “Petrov would pretend to be someone helpless to get their guard down, lure them in. His victims were just women of happenstance.” He leaned forward, arms resting on the desk. “But this isn’t Petrov. This guy could have a different way.” He stood suddenly. “You don’t need me here. No evidence, no suspect. Call me when you have something.”

“Where are you going?” Camille asked.

“To find some fresh food and a clothing store. This,” he started, gesturing to the khakis and long-sleeve button up he wore, “is not my idea of fashion. _Do skorogo_.” Vas turned, but he stopped and turned back to Camille. “Are there any CCTV cameras in that area?”

“What?”

“CCTV. Surveillance cameras? Do they not have cameras in this time?”

“We do, but nothing called CCTV. We’ll get a warrant for any recordings.”

“Good. Give me a call when you get them.”

\---

With fresh food in his kitchen and new clothes tumbling in the dryer in the bathroom, Vas turned on the shower, stepping in before the water even had a chance to heat up. The cold was a shock, waking him up from the sluggish mindset he’d fallen into.

His thoughts went back to the case in Russia. Leonid Petrov was the guy, there was no doubt in his mind. Vas had witnessed the complete erasure of his stack. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that a ghost was watching him. A ghost was behind this. Maybe the chief had been right, that Leonid had backed his stack up, that another copy of him existed. But Leonid died two hundred and fifteen years ago; why would he be back now? _And who would have spun him up?_

Light, gentle singing, the Russian words flowing like a brook. He grabbed the edge of the shower curtain, throwing it back quickly enough to send water flying. The singing silenced, fading away as quickly as it appeared.

The quick movement, the snap of the curtain in his vision, made him close his eyes, leaning back against the shower wall, the water running down his right arm. The effects seemed to be lasting longer, perhaps because of how long he’d been out. Vas reached down and turned off the water, grabbing the plush towel hanging on the hook. The singing still echoed in his head, an old Slavic lullaby, something his mother sang him at night. But it hadn’t been his mother’s voice.

\---

Vas jerked awake, his arms lashing out, his feet kicking, crying out in East Slavic, “ _Nyet, ne day yemu zabrat menya!_ ”

A cool hand against his sweat drenched chest, pressing him gently back onto the bed, calming his thrashing. He swallowed, stopping when he heard the gentle lullaby, an old Slavic lullaby that his mother would sing to him in the middle of the night. “You were speaking in your sleep.” Her hand moved from his chest to his forehead, brushing back the long brown hair that clung to his forehead. “I don’t know what you were saying. You have a different accent, it’s hard to understand.”

He shifted his body so he was sitting up, his back against the headboard, and looked over at the other bed. The top cover was still in place but rumpled. “Did you even sleep?” he asked.

The woman shook her head, her blonde braid falling over her shoulder. “I can’t. I have nightmares. It sounds like you do too.” Vas shifted his gaze, not wanting to meet her eyes, to let her know that he did, not wanting to talk about them. “Every time I close my eyes, I… I see him…”

He hesitated, looking back to her, unsure what to say. “Do you… do you want to talk about it?” he offered.

She chuckled. “You don’t sound very sure about that statement.”

“To be honest, Miss Novikov, I am not good at talking about things.”

She smiled at him, the smile reaching her sapphire eyes. “Please. Call me Vanya.”


End file.
